Portrait of an Author

A few months ago I was approached by my friend, Kim Fu, to shoot the inside portrait for her first novel, For Today I Am a Boy. Published by HarperCollins, it is slated for early 2013, and I know that Phil and myself are very excited to read it! Luckily for Kim and I, she had book related business to tend to in Toronto, and was able to stay with us for a few days. I’d never given much thought to the photographs of authors in their books before I had to shoot one for myself, so I started doing some research. The results were a little horrifying; boy oh boy, there a lot of bad author portraits out there! In this case, though, I could not have been luckier. The fact that Kim is already beautiful, combined with a 50mm lens, gorgeous sunlight, and some choice locations (on or around my apartment building) made the photo shoot failsafe.

I thought it’d be interesting to display some of the outtakes that we enjoyed on this blog. In terms of lighting, expression, and composition for the purpose of this shoot, the top left photograph won out by a long shot, though, and is the official author photograph. I’m curious to hear comments/critiques if you’ve got any for me!